


Complementary Colours

by ClearBrightLight



Series: A Series of Sensory Monographs [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-30 20:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClearBrightLight/pseuds/ClearBrightLight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson's life can be measured out in colours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Complementary Colours

John Watson's life can be measured out in colours.

 

His childhood was tinted in simple blues and greens: wide-open skies and rolling grass. Opportunity and innocence. Occasional reddish-browns, when there was whiskey, or blood, or both.

University was bright gold shot with white, a whirl of freedom and fun interrupted by the sleepless panic of a happily overworked mind. Occasionally -- not too infrequently -- there was the deep, dark green of orgasm.

The army was gunmetal grey and navy blue: certainty of purpose and ceaseless hard work, comradeship and belonging. No more careless golden fun, but the darker, sepia-toned glow of enjoyment: the knowledge that lightness was fleeting, and moments of laughter to be treasured, lending a mature hint of bitterness to every stolen sweetness, darkening even the deep greens from spruce to pine.

The shot that only just failed to kill him was black.

The illness that followed it was dripping with shades of orange and purple: the heat of fever and the reddish cramp of pain and fear, the queasy sickness of infection and uncertainty.

The time that followed was beige. Boredom. Lack of purpose. Helplessness. Shame. Uselessness.

(The flashbacks were ebony and acid-green, scarlet and turquoise, ice and neon. They made the rest of the day off-white and semi-transparent, trembling surfaces under which the more violent hues lurked. He learned, slowly, to keep them at bay, to not let them splatter out into the pallid everyday world, because they frightened civilians.)

He sat, and wasted, and waited.

Sherlock Holmes, with his usual impetuousness, abruptly interrupted his fade to white. Sherlock, who dressed all in black and white, but had a score of subtle tints in his strange, irridescent, all-seeing eyes. Sherlock had all the colours of the universe trailing in his wake, and he brought them all blooming back into view when John ran at his coat-tails: the clean cerulean of hunger, the golden gleam of laughter, the silver thrill of danger, the iron grey of usefulness, the sharp carmine of vicarious panic, the heady lavender of wonder, the warm green of mutual respect. John breathed in Sherlock's riotous rainbow, and exhaled the calm that Sherlock needed, creating a blank space around him in which he could think. John could fabricate beige for him, which made Sherlock feed him back more gentle yellows of gratitude, and John drank them in like a man dying in the desert. Because Sherlock saw beneath his placid surfaces to his own dark, jagged spectrum; he teased out John's inner blackened rainbow, and liked it, and reveled in the fact that his mere presence began to polish off a bit more of the tarnish every day.

John's rainbow shattered when Sherlock died. He sat slumped on the pavement and felt himself draining, emptying; even though it was Sherlock who was covered in red it was John who was bleeding out, all his inner hues trickling wanly away into the seams of the dull concrete. It was not a peaceful feeling. It hurt.

John became colourless again. Pale ash and bone dust. After too long in the sun, acting as a conductor of light, he found himself bleached, but the shadows into which he was thrust were no comfort at all; they neither hid nor quenched him.

Eventually, of course, he learned to live with it. Learned to seek out what hints he could grasp of the subtle pastels that washed vaguely around him: movies, friends, alcohol, work, sex. Nothing like as bright or as vibrant as he had once known, of course, but enough. Almost enough.

(Even the new nightmares were doughy and lacking in hue. John was not sure whether to be horrified or grateful; both seemed like too much effort.)

He did not fade completely. He was not a ghost. But his life was dim and flickering, and he did not brighten anyone else's days, either.

He had a moment's warning before Sherlock returned. Something unseen tipped him off, some subtle, subconscious, extra-sensory clue. Because when he opened the door that day, the scene on the other side was dyed in shades of brilliant living colour, such as he had not seen in years: a rich tapestry, when he had been expecting dry mimeograph; Oz, after Kansas. It actually took him a split second to notice the reason why, to see Sherlock standing in the doorway, he was so distracted with unexpected delight. After so long in the shadows, the sunlight was overwhelming.

And then he heard Sherlock's voice say his name --

And felt strong hands grip his arms --

And smelled the familiar, forgotten fragrance of his hair --

And tasted lightning on his inhale --

And the colours flooded and crashed through his head, too strong to bear, and he had to shut his eyes --

When John woke again, Sherlock's living crystalline eyes were sapphire, peridot, cornflower, azure, robin's egg, sky, aquamarine, viridescent, jade, fluorine, seafoam, glaucous, hazel, tawny, bay, fawn, sepia, slate, smoke, glitter, silver and gold, and all the infinite colours of the world were still there.

John could feel them all again. 


End file.
